North Korea's Move Toward Space Weapons
Pyongyang sets its sights on anti-satellite capabilities.
A short Nukesletter today while I take the train up to New York City for a few meetings.
The Third Gulf War has understandably drawn attention away from other developments in international security. I have a new piece out in Foreign Policy that seeks to spotlight an important change in North Korea’s approach to seeking strategic military capabilities after the recently held Ninth Party Congress:
Among the items on its five-year defense plan, Pyongyang listed “special assets for attacking enemy satellites in times of emergency.” That single phrase marks an important turning point: For the first time, North Korea has formally adopted counterspace weapons as a development priority. This is not offhand rhetoric from a state media commentary or an ambiguous research and development signal. It is a top-level policy directive, building on earlier legislation, from the country’s most important political event.
The counterspace objective is part of a broader modernization agenda spanning nearly every domain of military competition—from undersea deterrence to artificial intelligence to electronic warfare. Unlike the rest of these capabilities, however, the space component has no precursor in previous five-year plans. It represents a novel, qualitative, and potentially destabilizing expansion of strategic ambition into a domain where North Korea has, until now, been conspicuously absent.
Last year, in a commentary for NK Pro (where I’m a contributing analyst), I observed that North Korea was likely heading in this direction.
While Kim Jong Un has not focused his attention on counter-space capabilities or space-based nuclear weapons as part of his soon-to-be-concluded five-year plan for military modernization, the recent commentary hints at the kind of capabilities North Korea could turn its attention to in its next modernization plan under the Ninth Party Congress, which is expected to convene in Jan. 2026.
Either way, the U.S. turn toward a Golden Dome is unlikely to lead to propitious conditions for a more stable U.S.-North Korea nuclear deterrence dynamic.
I often like to say that the North Koreans are less opaque than they are made out to be. The indicators of the direction in which they might head are there for those looking.
More on France. Thanks to all of you who reached out or commented on the recent edition of this newsletter that commented on Macron’s speech on nuclear deterrence. There’s an excellent Carnegie Europe compendium with a diverse set of views from smart folks that I’d recommend for anyone wanting to dig further. As you’ll see, not all the views are positive.
On Iran and munitions. Bloomberg has some nice coverage on the cost dynamics at play in the ongoing war. I shared my views on the changing tides of the ongoing war: “The US appears to have underestimated Iran's tolerance for pain and its ability to inflict it in return.”
On Iran’s pain-infliction strategy, I’d observe that I see strong incentives for Tehran to make the economic pain of this conflict deep and durable, even if Israel and the United States would prefer earlier war termination. As long as the regime feels that it can hold on (and this seems likelier now than it did at the start of the conflict), significant global pain-infliction will provide a reminder of the costs of conflict in the Persian Gulf and presumably serve as a longer-term deterrent. It has the added benefit of creating political trouble at home for the United States and Trump in the near-term. This war does not seem close to over to me.
Thanks for reading, as always.